A project looking at harmful sexual behaviour in schools has provided mentoring for 24 boys across Brighton and Hove.
The project was started after an increase in the number of girls reporting abuse from boys at school including serious assaults.
The scheme is known as the Harmful Sexual Behaviours in Schools Project and it was started by the Brighton and Hove Safeguarding Children Partnership.
More girls reported abuse after the murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021. In the weeks afterwards, a number of girls staged a protest at Cardinal Newman Catholic School, Hove, and shared their experiences of harassment with teachers.
The safeguarding partnership, which is led by Brighton and Hove City Council, Sussex Police and NHS Sussex Integrated Care Board, commissioned the work from YMCA Downslink and the Trust for Developing Communities.
They aimed to help four secondary schools to create a positive anti-misogynist culture.
The council’s corporate director of families, children and wellbeing Deb Austin said that a mentor was deployed at the four schools.
She said: “This work targeted mentoring focusing on positive masculinity and reduction of harmful sexual behaviour for 24 boys who had been identified by the schools.”
Extra funding from the Sussex police and crime commissioner extended the programme to non-mainstream education, including the Connected Hub and children being home education.
Those who were involved with the mentoring were said to have responded positively to the programme.
Ms Austin said: “It also highlighted differences in perceptions between boys, who very much were seeing their behaviour as banter and jokes, and the experience of girls, their lived experience and the impact those behaviours were having on them on a personal level.”
She told the council’s Health and Wellbeing Board: “What is clear is there is much work still to do.”
Labour councillor Amanda Grimshaw praised the scheme at the same meeting and asked about incorporating it in personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education classes.
Ms Austin said that harmful sexual behaviour formed part of the PSHE curriculum but the boys involved had a more focused experience during their specialist sessions.
I think there should be a ‘How to be a Parent’ scheme. If your child(ren) cannot behave then they get taken away. Too many rely on the schools and the state to bring up their children. Personal responsibility people!
Dramatics aside, parenting classes are already a thing.
mobile phones can acess internet porn that influences teenage boys – parents must monitor the phones they buy their children. Ban their use in schools and stop access to social media platforms that enable bullying.
NO KNIVES and NO Phones in schools.
That comes down to setting up a device correctly. Social Media has a much bigger impact than bullying unfortunately, quite a bit of research out there linking long-term mentally illness to social media.